Site Marking Osceola's Capture Could Be Park

Osceola's history

A season of good rains has greened up the thick stands of palmetto screening the three-foot marker at the spot where Osceola County's namesake was captured.

Still, charred pines along Winterhawk Drive show lasting signs of a late 1990s brushfire south of St. Augustine.

The site where Gen. Joseph Hernandez, acting on orders from Gen. Thomas S. Jesup to ignore a white flag of truce, seized Osceola is remembered with a coquina marker.

It reads, "Osceola captured on this spot while under the protection of a flag of truce. Oct. 24, 1837."

Is this the right spot?

Maybe, maybe not. Witnesses say the site was "two musket shots south of Fort Peyton."

Sentinel columnist David Porter, the newsroom's in-house gun expert who owns a black-powder musket but admits he's no good with it, estimates a mid-1800s marksman might have been able to hit something 100 yards away.

Doubling that distance might have been far enough away from the fort to make Osceola relax and walk into a trap set by Jesup.

It was not the first time Osceola had come in for talks.

Just the past spring, Osceola came to Fort Mellon on Lake Monroe during one of several truces. West Point-trained Capt. John Vinton even persuaded Osceola to pose for sketches.

At the time, about 2,500 Seminoles were camping near Fort Mellon and drawing rations from the Army. Also there was Paddy Carr and a band of Creek warriors from Alabama who had come to fight with the Army against their rivals, the Seminoles.

Army officers entertained Osceola, Coacoochee and other chiefs in their tents with whiskey and port wine.

Yes, the site near Fort Peyton could well be the spot Osceola was captured along what once was the King's Road linking St. Augustine with Pensacola. Much of the old roadway has been abandoned, but old maps give clues.

The site and the circumstances seem reasonable to Patricia R. Wickman, author of Osceola's Legacy and historic preservation officer for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which is working with St. Johns County and the St. Augustine Historical Society to spruce up the site of the legendary Seminole's capture. Wickman is reviewing various records in hopes of nailing down the site as much as possible before pursuing plans for an expansion.

St. Johns County owns about a quarter acre around the capture marker, and plans for the new subdivision around it, Stonegate, could be adjusted to make room for an Osceola memorial and recognition as a National Park. But, there are road access problems to get to the site across private property.

Florida historians know of the site because an aging John Masters, who as a young officer witnessed the events of that October in 1837, retraced his steps in the early 1900s.

However, Charles Tingley, library manager for the St. Augustine Historical Society, said Masters' memory might have been a little fuzzy. The Masters' site is roughly a quarter mile away from a spot marked on an 1850s map. More research by Wickman and others is under way, and St. Johns County has established a committee with an archaeologist as the chairman to seek a definitive answer.

The Florida Times-Union on Aug. 2, 1896, carried an article about Masters identifying the site of the capture. He was 90 years old at the time.

The newspaper reported: "The veteran John Masters guided the party to the two pine tree stumps about a half mile south of what was once Fort Peyton, in St. Johns County where the capture was made. Mr. Masters was witness to the capture. . . . There can be no dispute as to the actual location of this historical event, as the chain of evidence has been kept complete by successive inhabitants in the vicinity of the present date."

Masters, whose great-great-great grandchildren live in Central Florida, was a captain when Osceola was arrested. His name was anglicized from Juan Pablo Mestre. He likely was under the command of Hernandez, a Spanish landowner whose plantation was raided by Seminoles.

Family lore describes Masters as "an unwilling member" of the group of soldiers who arrested Osceola without firing a shot.

Some historians suggestion Osceola was simply tricked by his own trickery, noting that Jesup claimed Osceola once killed a messenger sent with a truce flag and that he often used a white flag to gain safe entrance to St. Augustine and to spy. Jesup also claimed the Seminoles had broken truces and continued raids. Capturing Osceola, even when he flew the white flag, was justified because, Jesup said, drastic measures were needed to end the war.

But, war between the United States and the Seminoles never really ended until the U.S. Army went to war with the Confederate States more than two decades later.